Re: Is there any derivatives of heinleins "gulf" language speedtalk?

Hallo!

Dav Newq wrote:

> Is there any derivatives of heinleins "gulf" language speedtalk?
>
> here is a short description taken from the internet and
> heinleins "gulf"
>
> I am more intersested with the potentials of a speedtalk like
> language.In heinleins gulf:
>
> --1 speed talk word = 1 normal sentence
>
> --modifiers that indicate category of relation same words mean
> different depending on modifier
>
> -- by using a 60 base number system,and then prefacing certian words
> with one of these numbers a pool of 215,999 words 1 less than the
> cube of 60 were available for specialized meaning without more than
> 4 letters most could be pronounced in 1 syllable.adding 1 more
> letter added 13 million more words most could still be pronounced in
> one syllable
Sorry, I don't get it.  What is this mumbo-jumbo with base-60
numbers and a 60*60*60 cube minus 1?

> -- the use of speedtalk made the mind more efficient ,thought
> processes faster speaking nearly as fast as one could think.
That's Whorfian thinking, and seems *very* doubtful to me.

> --an association time 3* as fast as a normal man,enables
> manipulation of symbols 7* faster than english,7 * 3 = 21 a new man
> had an effective life of 1600 years when calculated with respect to
> the flow of ideas
Strange kind of reckoning, I must say.

> --does not contain noun things and verb things,it contains spacce
> time events and relationships between them .
>
>
>  Speedtalk
>  Here's a description of an imaginary language from the Robert
>  Heinlein story Gulf. I consider this a perfect example of
> science fiction as a literature of ideas. Not only does it transmit
> the idea of inventing a language (with a few variations that make it
> different than, say, Esperanto), it also hints at the idea of a
> hierarchical language and the distinction between words and reality.
> And that's just a small part of the story-it's mainly focused onthe
> idea of the genetic superman.Anyway, here's the part about the
> imaginary language.
>
>
> Long before, Ogden and Richards had shown that eight hundred and
>  fifty words were sufficient vocabulary to express anything that
> could be expressed by "normal" human vocabularies, with the aid
> of a handful of special words-a hundred odd-for each special field,
> such as horse racing or ballistics.
As Mark Rosenfelder once put it: Ogden and Richards cheated.
Reality is too complex to pigeonhole it into a closed set of
categories like that.  Basic English makes use of a large number
of idiomatic expressions (e. g. _make good_ `succeed'), which
must be learned individually like the words they replace.

>        About the same time phoneticians
> had analyzed all human tongues into about a hundred-odd sounds,
> represented by the letters of a general phonetic alphabet.
>  On these two propositions Speedtalk was based.
>
>  To be sure, the phonetic alphabet was much less in number than
> the words in Basic English. But the letters representing sound in
> the phonetic alphabet were each capable of variation several
> different ways-length, stress, pitch, rising, falling. The more
> trained an ear was the larger the number of possible variations;
> there was no limit to variations, but, without much refinement of
> accepted phonetic practice, it was possible to establish a one-to-
> one relationship with Basic English so that one phonetic symbol was
> equivalent to an entire word in a "normal" language, one Speedtalk
> word was equal to an entire sentence.
A language with 850 phonemes would quickly run into trouble because
of mispronunciations and mishearings.  And that doesn't even take
into account the question of phonotactics.

>  An economical language cannot be limited to a thousand words;
>  although almost every idea can be expressed somehow in a short
>  vocabulary, higher orders of abstraction are convenient. For
>  technical words Speedtalk employed an open expansion of sixty of the
>  thousand-odd phonetic letters. They were the letters ordinarily
> used as numerals; by preceding a number with a letter used for no
> other purpose, the symbol was designated as having a word value.
>
>
> It's not stated explicitly, but I think it's a small step from
> the idea of numbered words to the idea that the sequence of digits
> might be a hierarchy, with, say, the first digit indicating the
> appropriate special field.
Trying to work out Heinlein's speedtalk may be an entertaining
mindgame, but I don't think this pursuit is practical.

Greetings,

Jörg.

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